Tile-based graphics processing units (GPUs) have been used to break up rendering of an output bitmap or a render target into smaller regions and separately execute drawing operations to these smaller regions before combining them to produce a final image output. Tile-based GPUs are particularly useful when used in conjunction with devices that have limited memory and bandwidth, as portions of an input image are separately rendered, thus using smaller amounts of memory and bandwidth. Flushing operations that occur during execution of an effect graph can be expensive. Avoiding flushes during the performance of general image processing operations on the GPU, however, can be difficult, as the GPU typically issues a flush each time a render target is switched.